


Modify Memory

by yfere



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, basically I just want Jester to use shady spells, blatant wish fulfillment, spoilers for e69, the magic is dicey but it works because I said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 02:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19416859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yfere/pseuds/yfere
Summary: In another world, Jester pulls Yasha through the door. e69 spoilers.





	Modify Memory

**Author's Note:**

> #WishFulfillment

_I’ve never met a smile that wasn’t beautiful,_ Marion Lavorre once said. Jester had been poking idly at the gap between her front teeth, not thinking but also not _not_ thinking about how she hoped her molars would push them closer together, make the whole arrangement more resemble her mother’s perfect pearly rows. The smile she returned to her mother was close-mouthed, careful, like the Traveler’s smile had been becoming lately. But Marion’s hand reached out to tickle her, and she squealed a laugh even before it made contact so—not an act that could be kept up for long. _There. I knew it was as beautiful as the rest._ She said it with the confidence of a connoisseur, like she had seen all the smiles in the world and so she would know. Jester supposed that maybe she had.

Now, Jester looked past the creature giggling through the teeth on its neck and shoulder and chest—looked to Yasha, who only had one slash of a smile on her face, but one that looked somehow even more wrong. Even more like a wound.

 _Oh, Mama,_ Jester thought, _You wouldn’t have said that if you saw this._

She concentrated on the shape of it, the drawing back of lips that hovered a shade away from a snarl, a scream. Tried not to scream herself. No, she’d just sketch it later, draw three arms coming out of Yasha’s mouth and a flower crown and it would be making fun of this stupid worm god and that _stupid_ mural. Maybe she and Yasha could laugh about it together.

The door was closing. She’d be damned if she’d leave Yasha on the other side of it.

Jester had learned a lot of funny little dances once. One of her favorites was the lasso, where you mime tugging your partner across the dancefloor on a rope. Easy enough to imagine away the weight of the whip in her hands, to close her eyes and imagine the spilled blood was spilled beer, that the cackling was friendlier, was over a drinking contest. A dancing tune thrummed beneath her skin. Hupperdook. _Remember Hupperdook, Yasha?_

She sent the whip flying forward.

She felt it connect.

And when she opened her eyes she saw that she would have missed, except that Yasha had snatched it out of the air, was hurriedly wrapping it around her arm. For a moment, her heart thrilled, even as she heard Fjord somewhere behind her, voice faint with blood loss, saying _I tried to take her with me, she didn’t want to come—_

Nonsense. She would let Jester save her, just this once. She wanted to be brought to the other side, with them. There was the proof of it.

  
But then, she saw the way Yasha was positioning the Skin Gorger in her hand—she meant to use the momentum of the pull to thrust it in Jester. She had no more duplicates to absorb the blow.

But it would be worth it. There was no question it would be worth it. She yanked her inside.

The blow was only glancing, and Jester managed in a moment to restrain Yasha more fully with the whip. Though from the way she struggled, who knew how long that would last. It looked about on the verge of snapping as she struggled within it. The others were shouting, _how can we drag her, we have to get moving, what if it breaks through—_

Beau and Caleb exchanged a look. _Tighten the whip,_ Caleb said, and as she did Yasha shrank in size, until she was the size of Nugget, when he was still a little puppy that could be picked up in one arm. Beau grimaced, and sent her fists flying for Yasha’s head. _I won’t kill her,_ she said, when Jester began to step in the way. So instead she held onto the whip, listened to one sickening crack after the next land on Yasha’s temple, until that strange smile dropped off of her face and she went limp.

 _I’ll carry her,_ Caduceus said. _I can manage it even after the minute is up._

The barrier between them and the Hand sounded paper thin, but maybe that was the fear, thudding and clawing its way out of her own insides. How much time had they lost?

They ran.

They ran and it was a hard thing, knowing they’d have to fight on the way, bolting across the bridge they’d been so careful of, before. Fjord kicked at the fastenings holding the bridge together, but they couldn’t wait for long, and had to drag him away. Nott locked the doors behind them, almost throwing Fluffernutter as well, before thinking better of it. They were halfway up the staircase when Caleb’s spell wore off, and Caduceus bowed a little more beneath the weight on his shoulders. The creature they’d been attacking, and which had been aiming for Caduceus’ neck instead raked its claws across Yasha’s back, but Jester had the spell that would stabilize her already on her lips. They pressed forward.

Then it was a matter of finding the moorbounders, and moving Caleb’s rope from their bodies to around Yasha’s, Fjord lashing her to Clarabelle like a cannon to a gun port. Caleb brought out the manacles, the ones that could put people to sleep, and Jester nearly broke his hand ripping them away from him. Those were for _enemies_. They weren’t for Yasha. Not again. Never.

After that, things—faded. Went a little white around the edges. The others were talking, but Jester couldn’t make out words, only tone. Fjord and Caleb, angry, Caduceus tearful, Nott—all of them, afraid. Except for Beau, who sounded much the same as she always did. Jester’s eyes fluttered shut. _Thank you, Beau,_ she whispered to herself. It sounded like a prayer to her own ears.  
  
Fjord jostled her elbow, and she struggled to pay more attention. “What do you think? We can’t keep her unconscious forever. If you and Caduceus get some rest, would you really be able to fix her?” The way his mouth twisted on _fix_ told her he still didn’t think she was being controlled. What he was really asking was _Do you agree we might have to kill her if your spells don’t work,_ and that was an idea Jester could not, would not entertain.

She took a second to gather something passing for confidence. “Of course! The Traveler is very powerful, you know.”

  
They didn’t feel safe bringing Yasha to Bazzoxan, so they immediately set on the longer road curving around the Barbed Fields. The idea was to get some more distance and sleep on the road, and for Jester to alert both Rosohna and the people they knew in Bazzoxan in the morning. Yasha woke up once more before they made camp, snarled and tried to kick Caduceus off the moorbounder with her bound feet. They decided to knock her out again.

Setting up watch was a little more complicated than usual—they needed Yasha fully operational as soon as possible, so at least one of the clerics needed to sleep until the final watch, to recover for casting. But they also needed to make sure she stayed both unconscious and stable until then, which seemed to require having a cleric to keep watch over her for the entire night. They needed _both_ Jester and Caduceus to rest though—Jester knew this. It couldn’t be one or the other of them.

“Or,” Nott said quietly. “You could use the manacles.”

Jester realized she was holding her wrists, feeling for bruises that weren’t there. Not anymore. “You weren’t—” she began.

“No, you’re right, I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Her tone was bitter enough to make Jester’s hands drop to her sides. With the goblins, yes. “Oh. It was longer for you, wasn’t it,” she said faintly.

Nott shook her head slightly, something hovering behind her eyes Jester couldn’t recognize. “Let me into the haversack, I’ll be the one to do it.”

  
As sick as she felt, Jester couldn’t help but watch Nott work. She had to watch, because if you looked at something hard enough, if you let the colors and shapes, the lighting and the complication overwhelm you, then it could all look beautiful in a way. Nott locking chains around Yasha could become a charcoal sketch without meaning, without movement. The trouble was Yasha looked just as lifelike in black and white. Maybe she should change mediums.

It occurred to her she would normally be making a joke around now. Manacles are a bit like harnesses and whips in that way—they’re _funny_.

“I talked with Yasha last night,” Nott said, voice even quieter than before. And sketches weren’t supposed to talk, were they? “She said she was afraid of being locked up and tortured to death. But we’re not planning on tearing her apart limb from limb, so I think we can still stay in her good books. Unless you’re planning on eviscerating her or something?”

“Fjord might be,” Jester blurted. That wasn’t funny. It wasn’t true and it wasn’t funny, and that wasn’t the kind of joke she told, now was it. She flashed a grin at Nott, trying to smooth it over.

Nott dusted off her knees. “Since I’ll be watching her all night, he’ll get a bolt between the eyes if he tries it.”

“Nott! You can’t be the only one taking watch. You’ll be exhausted.”

“I won’t be exhausted,” Nott said. “I’ll be drunk.”

No one managed to talk Nott out of it this time, and as Jester watched Nott settle down, patting Yasha’s shin before taking a long pull of whiskey, she thought it was probably a mistake, telling Nott the truth back then. Maybe she shouldn’t be thinking so much about that, or Yasha, or Mama. She was supposed to be sleeping. She _needed_ to sleep.

She couldn’t.

Drawing might calm her down. She thought she’d rework the scene with Yasha and Nott in green ink, to make it look friendlier. Add some leaves so that the chains look more like vines, wreathing Yasha in flowers to look a bit more like the story with the princess who ate a poisoned apple, who fell asleep but was set in a meadow by a clan of dwarves—

She woke with Frumpkin curled around her neck, and a line of drool on her chin that had made the ink bleed on the page, smeared Yasha’s sleeping mouth into a kind of gruesome smile.

Caduceus squeezed her shoulder slightly from where he’d crouched beside her. “Final watch now. Time for us to start working.”

She blinked around blearily. Caduceus had already tied up Yasha in preparation for taking off the manacles, and Nott was already curled up asleep by her side. The flask was open, sending an unending trickle of alcohol into the dirt, spreading for a few moments before vanishing.

Caduceus followed her line of vision. “The good news is, she didn’t stay up too long.”

“So the drinking is a good thing now?”

“One thing at a time.” Watching Caduceus stand up was always an experience—like watching a ghost rising from the grave in a phantasmagoria show. Disjointed in a way—she’d blink and he’d be so much farther along in it than it seemed he should be. “Best to do these things with some privacy, anyway.”

He was right, though she wanted to hold onto the quiet a bit longer. “Maybe the spell wore off by now,” she murmured.

It hadn’t. The moment they were a safe distnce from the tiny hut and Jester lifted the chains from her wrists, Yasha jolted to wakefulness, and it only took another moment for her lip to curl, her eyes to darken. She was so _quiet_ , even when angry. She struggled against the ropes, rubbing her skin raw on them. Jester’s hands jerked forward, as if on their own.

“Maybe she’s mad we tied her up,” she said

“Just a moment,” Caduceus said. He turned to Yasha. “I think you need to **_calm down._** ”

He’d loaded some magic into the words, and Yasha slumped forward, like a flower wilted in the heat. When she raised her face again, she still didn’t look quite like herself. There was no warmth in her expression at all. Jester didn’t realize how used she’d grown, to that.

Caduceus looked over at her, and she cast _Zone of Truth._

“Now, what do you think you’re doing here?” Caduceus asked. He’d adopted the same brisk tone he used when they were interrogating corpses, and Jester shut her eyes, trying to forget the association.

“It looks like I’m tied up,” Yasha said. Her voice sounded far too lifeless. “I assume you people did that.” She shook her head slightly. “I didn’t think you would do that, Jester.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I’m not mad.” She blinked. “That’s a little strange.”

“You were angry earlier. You attacked some of us. Do you remember why?” Caduceus said.

“I needed to avenge Obann. The people who killed him had to die. It seemed important at the time.”

“But we’re your friends, Yasha!” Jester said. “Don’t you remember that?”

“We were friends,” Yasha agreed. “It doesn’t—feel like we are anymore, though. Obann and I shared a history, years together. We were two parts of the same—I’ve only known you all for a little while. You can’t replace him. You can’t kill him and get away with it.” As she spoke her voice got angrier and angrier, the magic Caduceus used slipping away. She began struggling again, her chafed skin breaking open around the wrists, blood soaking into the rope. For a moment, it looked like the cuts were growing teeth—but no, it was just moonlight, glancing off her pale skin.

Jester clutched at her holy symbol. “She _has_ to remember we’re her friends.” She didn’t know whether she was talking to the Traveler, Caduceus, or herself.

Caduceus pulled a diamond from his satchel. “I don’t think this will work,” he said slowly. “I don’t think Mr. Fjord is entirely right, but it looks like she might have remembered something out there, and whatever it was made her no friend of ours.”

“I’ll give you all my diamonds,” Jester said. “Please, you have to try.”

The diamond shattered at his word and drifted around them, like so much pollen in the air before Yasha breathed it in. But she pulled against the ropes even harder, tried to roll away towards a sharp rock by the side of the path.

 _You can’t make her remember,_ a lilting voice whispered into her ear. _But you can make her forget._

Caduceus’ staff was raised above Yasha’s head, poised to knock her unconscious.

“ **Wait!** ” She ran over, knocking the staff away. “I can fix this. I know what to do.”

She’d never done this before, not exactly, but the Traveler’s voice by her ear guided through the important parts. First they had to drag Yasha away from the _Zone of Truth_ , then all it took was a little reach into the mind, just like any other charm. The trick was staying in there after you made it in, rearranging things so that they’d last.

“Obann attacked you as soon as we stepped inside,” Jester said, staring into Yasha’s glassy eyes. “He wouldn’t even talk to us. He cast a mind control spell and you tried to attack Nott and Fjord so we had to knock you out right away.” With that, she hurriedly began untying her. “Help me heal her a little!” she whispered to Caduceus.

The wounds around her wrists closed, the blood matted in her hair consumed by lichen that crumbled to dust after a moment.

Jester looked up to find Yasha staring at her with clear eyes. She looked confused, and her face was flushed. Jester withdrew her hand from Yasha’s hair.

“I was checking for head wounds,” she said hurriedly.

“I—okay.” Yasha looked around. “I’m sorry. I just keep hurting you all.”

“You _don’t_.” And she reached her hand back into Yasha’s hair, pulled her in for a hug. “Or, we all hurt each other sometimes. But we save each other a lot more, don’t we? We want you around always, Yasha. _Always_. No matter what.” _And no matter what it takes._

Slowly, slowly Yasha hugged back. And when they stood up to make their way back to the bubble, Jester thought she caught a hint of a smile.

It was beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> I may be taking some liberties with this spell here, but it's all for a good cause, right?


End file.
